Foreign affairs minister Murray McCully has revealed that Japanese whalers will operate within New Zealand's "search and rescue zone" this summer."It's going to be very close to home. And I've made that point to the Japanese government that
Foreign affairs minister Murray McCully has revealed that Japanese whalers will operate within New Zealand's "search and rescue zone" this summer.
"It’s going to be very close to home. And I’ve made that point to the Japanese government that New Zealanders are going to be watching,", Mr McCully told Q&A host Guyon Espinor.
The Japanese whaling fleet will zig-zag between Australia and New Zealand's search and rescue zones (New Zealand's is a a 30 million square kilometres area is one of the largest of any country, stretching from the equator to the South Pole).
But while the response of some members of the public can be easily predicted, Mr McCully is playing his cards close to his chest.
The government is "thinking about that matter very much", the minister told the TVNZ host.
(See the full interview transcript below.)
RAW DATA: Q+A’s Guyon Espiner's interview with Foreign Minister Murray McCully.
Main points:
The interview has been transcribed below. The full length video interviews and panel discussions from Q+A can also be seen on tvnz.co.nz at, http://tvnz.co.nz/q-and-a-news
GUYON ESPINER – Political Editor
Thank you, minister, for making time for us. There’s a lot of interested in this APEC, obviously, about the opening up of Japan’s economy to the world. How realistic is it, do you think, that Japan, one of the world’s most protected economies in many ways, is really going to open up and join a massive free-trade region which includes New Zealand and the United States of America?
MURRAY McCULLY – Foreign Minister
Well, that has been the exciting news associated with APEC this year. I don’t know the answer to your question, I don’t think anyone does, but the Japanese leadership – prime minister, finance and foreign affairs ministers – have done something that no other leadership team have done before: they’ve got their Cabinet to sign up to a national debate in Japan about whether they’re going to open the country up to free trade, and wear the political consequences from the agriculture lobby.
GUYON They are serious about this?
MURRAY Yeah, I was taken aback in my first meeting with my new Japanese counterpart, Minister Maehara. He was outlining the case to me for their country opening up, and their prime minister was doing the same thing to our prime minister. And, of course, they’ve sent that signal very strongly in Japan. They’re now going to have to deal with a bureaucracy that’s been both powerful and strongly opposed to the opening up of the agricultural sector to competition. They’re going to have to deal with an internal debate within the DPJ, the ruling party, which is not in agreement on this matter, so who knows how that’s going to turn out.
GUYON But might all that simply slow this Trans-Pacific Partnership down and actually be a drag on the rest of the countries who are involved in it?
MURRAY Well, that would be the case if, in fact, they were going to be at the table from the beginning. But I think they’ve very sensibly seen that they’re not ready yet to sit at the table, that they’ve said they’ll start a conversation with TPP parties acknowledging that they’ve got to have that debate internally and win it before they’re able to sit at the table. It’s a courageous step for their leadership to take, and I don’t think we should understate that at all.
GUYON The other big foreign-policy issue that New Zealanders will engage with on Japan is whaling. Now, the International Whaling Commission has pretty much failed in this area in recent months. We’ve got the Japanese about to start another season of whaling. What is New Zealand now doing about this?
MURRAY Well, not only start another season, start another season this time in our search-and-rescue zone, so it’s going to be very close to home. And I’ve made that point to the Japanese government that New Zealanders are going to be watching.
GUYON Within our search-and-rescue zone? So how close? What are we talking about?
MURRAY Well, they tend to alternate between the Australian and New Zealand search-and-rescue zones. Well south of our country, of course, where we tend not to have much in the way of shipping for rescue purposes, but the fact is that because it’s in our zone we’ll be associated with this much more closely.
GUYON So what do we do?
MURRAY Well, we’re thinking about that matter very much now. I’ve spoken to the Japanese government and told them that New Zealanders are going to be watching what they do this year. They of course set themselves a target take in terms of the number of whales they intend to catch. If that number’s a high number, that’s going to upset and antagonise New Zealanders a great deal. Even if it’s a lower number, around the zone that they were talking about as being a voluntary cut at the time of the negotiations, even that’s going to be upsetting to many. And they know that.
GUYON Did you go as far as saying ‘Don’t do it’? Or is that just a hopeless cause?
MURRAY Look, I’m trying to persuade them that it’s a business they should get out of. I personally think that we can win that argument with them. Sometime in the next five years they’ve got to replace some very expensive equipment, particularly the mother ship, if they intend to keep on whaling in the Southern Ocean. And frankly, on the numbers they were talking about – they were talking about 200 as being their take in the Southern Ocean after five years in terms of the diplomatic discussions – that seemed to me to show some understanding that this is not going to be a very commercial proposition at that point when they’ve gotta expend a large amount of money on new plant, face international hostility, and particularly from New Zealand.
GUYON What about Australia? They’ve obviously got their court case in the International Courts. Is New Zealand going to join that action?
MURRAY I’ve made it clear that we’re looking at that, and this is going to be a long-run thing, the full Australian court case won’t be filed until something like April or May of next year, so we haven’t had a chance to look at that in detail.
GUYON When will you look at that with Australia?
MURRAY I’m meeting with Kevin Rudd this coming Tuesday in Canberra. When I met him last in New York a few weeks ago, I invited him to give us his thoughts. He said he wanted to think about that, talk to his new Cabinet colleagues, talk to the officials who are involved in this area. But they’ve gotta think about whether they really want us to join the action. Now, we’re not gonna let them make our decision, but I at least want to give them the courtesy of full consultation before I go to our Cabinet for a decision. The complication, partly, is that if we were to file and become a party in the International Court of Justice, they would lose a judge. Under the rules, they get to appoint a judge to the court if they don’t have one already. We have one already, so Kenneth Keith is on that court. And because we joined as a party they would lose their entitlement.
GUYON So it might be more judicious of us to actually let Australia go it alone?
MURRAY Well, it would certainly be sensible for us to hear their views in detail before we make a decision, and I want to do that.
GUYON Can we move on to China, obviously another big player in the APEC region, and at this conference. A number of countries are nervous about China’s growing influence in the region, and I want to talk about New Zealand’s perspective on this. Your government’s white paper was published recently, and regarding China it says, and I quote, “that there will be a natural tendency for it to define and pursue its interests in a more forthright way on the back of growing wealth and power”. How will that manifest itself, do you think?
MURRAY I think closer to home you’ll probably see the sort of tensions we’ve seen in the South China seas recently as they compete with neighbours for some of the small islands and the resources associated with them. That’s happening right now. There’s no doubt that we’ll see a bigger presence from China in the Pacific. Certainly they have become more assertive in some respects, but New Zealand manages this very carefully, and we are watched very closely because we have a relationship with China that is unlike most of our friends’.
GUYON What do you mean by that – we are watched very closely? You mean China because of our closeness?
MURRAY Yes, not because they think that we are gonna misbehave, but because they want to learn from us. I mean, we’ve had a huge number of the Chinese leadership through New Zealand. That’s not something that the United States or some of the other much larger countries can say. And so there are other countries that are developing closer ties with China that look to New Zealand, see that we’re the only developed country with a free-trade agreement in place, want to know how we manage the relationship, want to know how we deal with human-rights issues in that context, want to know how we try and structure the relationship in a formal sense.
GUYON That’s quite a different attitude than Australia, then, isn’t it? Their own white paper viewed China as a threat, potentially, and said they had to explain their military build-up otherwise people would be suspicious. I mean, do you see China as a threat?
MURRAY Yes, well, of course, the white paper in Australia was the end result of a very hot debate amongst officials and commentators, and they came down on the side of the harder interpretation of the future of that relationship. Of course, it has an alliance with the United States which makes it more fully engaged across a number of other spheres as well.
GUYON Let’s talk about the United States now. Obviously they’re the other big big player in this trade agreement that we are looking at. Now, how realistic is it that the heavily protected dairy industry in the United States, a big prize for New Zealand because we export about a billion dollars’ worth of dairy there, are they really gonna roll over and let New Zealand export its agricultural goods and its dairy goods into the United States free of any tariffs?
MURRAY Well, it’s a question of taking a little time to get there, but yes, I think they’re on a path which shows a very strong conviction in that respect. Of course, we’ve got to deal with a number of challenges along the way, and the Houses of Congress present some challenges in that respect, although the recent elections require some further analysis before we can be quite clear about what that looks like. But I think the United States is in a similar space to Japan and others. These are countries whose economies have been performing in a fairly ordinary fashion in recent years. They look at some of the countries like China, like the Aseans that have opened up their borders and decided to back the capacity of their industries to compete and, of course, be rewarded with growth rates that are 7%, 8%, 9%, 10%.
GUYON You’ve hosted Hillary Clinton in New Zealand recently. Did she ask for New Zealand troops to remain in Afghanistan for longer than you have publicly positioned yourself to have them be in that country?
MURRAY Well, we’ve been very clear that the mandates for both the SAS and the PRT require rollover from time to time. The SAS are due to come out in March of next year, although the Prime Minister has made it clear that they themselves can see a case for leaving some of their number there past that date. I think Secretary Clinton and her colleagues made it clear to us that the more we could do for longer, the more grateful they would be.
GUYON That’s as far as it went?
MURRAY Yes. Look, we’ve always experienced considerable respect from the United States in that respect. They don’t think that we’ve been shirking our responsibilities to world stability here.
GUYON What are we gonna do, then? Are we gonna leave them there longer?
MURRAY Those are matters that the Prime Minister has indicated we’ll address over the latter weeks of this year. In fact, I’m involved pretty heavily in that process right now. They’re not easy decisions, and of course they take place against the background of some decision-making both by the contributing nations themselves and the leadership in Afghanistan about transition. And so there’ll be a NATO or ISAF meeting coming up in a couple of weeks at which transition will be discussed. They won’t choose provinces, but they will certainly indicate how the process is likely to work. Some weeks after that, we’re likely to start to see how transition might occur. Now, I think that we need to understand all of those things so that we can make good decisions not just about our military contribution but also about our development work, which is obviously critical if we’re going to see transition occur.
GUYON Can I finally turn to the Pacific? You’ve got some pretty close engagement with the United States administration in recent weeks and months. Do you get a sense that they are worried about the vacuum in the Pacific and that China might fill that?
MURRAY Well, they would never put it in those terms, but I made a point of welcoming when Secretary Clinton was in town both the re-engagement of the US in the Asia-Pacific region and specifically the decision to join the East Asia Summit. I also welcomed the decision to establish US aid again and to establish an office in Suva with a budget to spend in the region in partnership with countries like New Zealand. I think it’s fair to say that the United States has drawn its own conclusions about a need for them to have a greater presence. It’s something that we welcome and something that gives us an opportunity for partnerships across a range of spheres there.
GUYON What about New Zealand? The US seems to be re-engaging with Fiji to some extent. Is it time for us to have another approach at this? You’ve had the sanctions for some time. I know you’ve claimed that they are working, because it’s hurting them. I know that’s the point. Is it time, though, to bring about some sort of change, to engage more with Fiji?
MURRAY Well, I’ve always taken the view that we need to engage, because unless we engage we won’t be able to take advantage of the opportunities when the come along.
GUYON Are you going to do anything differently now, though, minister?
MURRAY Well, we’re continuing to talk to our friends about how we work our way forward, but let’s be clear, it takes two to make progress in this area. There’s gotta be reciprocity if there’s going to be progress.
GUYON Not seeing that?
MURRAY No, I don’t think we have. The regime has made it pretty clear that they’ve got their own course charted now.
GUYON For 2014 elections?
MURRAY That’s what they say.
GUYON Some in the United States are quite happy with that. Is that as good as we’re gonna get?
MURRAY Some take that view, let’s be honest about that. I’m of the view that we should be more ambitious than that, but we also need to understand what’s possible and be well placed to try and encourage progress when it’s available to us, and that’s something I’m try to do. I’ve been to Fiji I think three times this year. I maintain contact, but I also try and make sure that New Zealand doesn’t get itself isolated from its close partners, particularly Australia.
GUYON Any change in your actual dealing with Fiji now, then?
MURRAY There’s no actual change. It’s a constant process of review. If we see an opportunity to make progress, we’ll grab it. I don’t think we should let pride drive these matters. I’ve made it very clear to the Fijian minister of foreign affairs and some of his colleagues that I would really like to see us make some progress over the next 12 months, but it’s over to them, and the offer’s there for us to help facilitate if we can possibly achieve something good.
GUYON Thank you very much, Minister McCully.
